Yevgeniya Albats

MOSCOW, January 20. /TASS/. Popular Moscow-based journalist Yevgeniya Albats , the editor-in-chief of The New Times magazine, is expected to appear at the hearings in the city’s Presnensky Administrative Court in connection with the charges for non-compliance with the orders of road inspectors.

On December 27, Albats’s car was pulled aside by inspectors on the downtown Novy Arbat avenue. Materials of the case say the journalist refused to show her documents when the inspectors requested them.

Pending her refusal, the inspectors filled out the so-called administrative protocol citing article 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences, which stipulates penalties for a failure to comply with legitimate orders of police officers.

In the meantime, Albats told the Ekho Moskvy radio station the inspector who had stopped her on a rather busy and inconvenient section of the road had not introduced himself as required by the rules and had refused to specify the reason for stopping her car.

She also said she had shown her driving license and the certificates for the car to him eventually but only after a conversation with an officer of a senior rank.

The penalty the court may award to her has two options — a fee of 1,000 rubles ($15.4) or an arrest for fifteen days.